Believing in the Impossible

Kayla's latest blog regarding Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass talked about adult nostalgia in relation to the texts. She said, in her final sentence, "Could children's books be adults way of believing in impossible? If only for a moment, maybe." Which led me to thinking about how adults fit into the world of children's literature, if we do at all. As suggested in class, do adults have to become as a child to read children's books, or better yet do adults have to read children's books to become as a child. By believing in the impossible are we able to become, if only for a moment, like a child. When Alice sees the white rabbit, "it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time is seemed quite natural." Had Alice been an adult, her adventure might never have happened because a sensible adult would hardly believe in the impossible: a white rabbit with a waistcoat-pocket or a watch to take out of it saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late."

I like reading smart literature where I am supposed to learn somthing and appreciate it for it's literary genius. I also love reading fiction. I love the Harry Potter Series, His Dark Materials, and Eragon etc. When I read these books I read them in a way that can be detrimental to school, work, and life. My mom would get really mad because I never did any of my chores, now Sutter feels ignored and neglected, and so do my dogs when I start reading those kinds of books because I sit there and I do not move from my spot on the couch unless for absolute necessaries (food and bathroom) or until I've finished the book. I delve into the world of the impossible and live it and breathe it without coming back to reality. I always wondered why I could never put one of these books down and maybe I know, because I finally get to believe in the impossible, and no one likes to come back to reality after such adventures.

* * * * *

While reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I was reminded of My Book and Heart Shall Never Part on page 45 when Alice was thinking to herself, "When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of theing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!" Much like in Lynda Sexson's visual essay when the little girl (Devita Sexson) reading the book can't tell which side of the page she is on and becomes the character she is reading. While Alice is physically transported to another world through a rabbit hole (portal), Devita is transported to another world through reading a book (another portal). Like I am transported to another world when I read a book for pure pleasure and I forget I am sitting on a couch and my mother repeats herself until she has to take my book away from me so I can hear her, because at that moment I am no longer Samantha Clanton, but I am Lyra Silvertongue, my dog curled at my feet is my deamon, and I am riding on the back of a polar bear, traveling to other worlds, fighting evil, reading the alethiometer, speaking to angels, on a quest of great importance to the future of the world. When I come back to reality I have to wake up and go to class......where would you rather be?

Inspired by "My Book and Heart Shall Never Part"

Thursday night was a real treat and my first time ever at a world premiere. Lynda Sexson's visual essay, My Book and Heart Shall Never Part was visually, intellectually, and emotionally visceral. (Here is a link to a brief article with a summary of the film called Text to image: Sexson explores early children's books in new film.) The images of old texts and a story woven around and within them was beautifully crafted. In my previous blog I mentioned some ideas and questions Lynda presented to us in class which we saw in the film. It was a little dark in the theater to be taking notes, and I forgot a pen. But I remember one quote and I liked it a lot. "The earth comes down to earth."

While watching the film the guy sitting next to me, Sutter, leaned over and very exuberantly whispered, "that's Lindley Park!", then later he said, "Oh! and that's Cooper Park!" and the last, but most excited whisper, "Sam! That's Sourdough Trail!" This struck me. Yes the film was set in Bozeman, so why was Sutter so excited to recognize these places. He was just like a child, excited to see the familiar. This reminded me of what I had read in the Introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Tan Lin. "The adult is a child whose childhood desires are something she hasn't learned to forget" (xxxii). Sutter was recognizing his backyard, the familiar, the comfortable. Being attatched to home is something very related to children because it is often hard for children to be away from home for very long. I know it took me a very long time to be able to spend one night away from my parents at a friends house. Tan Lin also says, "the reader's recognition is a repitition with a difference, because the repitition involves retelling. Repetition is about eternity and stopping time; repetition with a difference presupposes change and time passing" (xxxii). This fittingly and ironicly led me to think of the word, anamesis, which means, a recalling to memory; recollection or a reminiscence. William Wordsworth stresses the importance of memory and recollection in his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." A short article by Khara House called The Role of Memory in Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality says"William Wordsworth uses memory as a connective force between past and present, one’s ability to recall the joy of one’s past in order to, not know that it exists now, but find peace in the knowledge that it once existed. In this sense, according to Wordsworth’s poem, memory provides a form of recollection of a glorious beginning to life that passes away into commonalities as we age and mature."

So we need our memory in order to stay connected with our childhood that fades with maturity. Is this why there is that adult nostalgia concerning children's literature? Without something to help us recollect our chilhoods, then we could forget and by remembering our childhoods we can take comfort in knowing that it once existed as Wordsworth suggests.

And memory is always recollected back to Mnemosyne who was the Titan goddess of memory and remembrance and the inventress of language and words.

Is there such a thing as children's literature?

watercolor by Ben Clanton (my brother)

Lynda Sexson was in our class on Friday as a guest lecturer and presented the class with many interesting ideas and questions. One in particular seemed to stump the class: "Is there such a thing as children's literature?" My immediate answer in my head was to respond with a tautolity: Of course there is children's literature, it is literature for children, but the answer is so much more, that is why I kept quiet. There isn't one clear, right, or wrong answer because children's literature is proving to be more complicated than I have anticipated, and I should know better.

The question, "is there such thing as children's literature?", is more than thinkable. Lynda offered a possible response to the question: Children's literature is for adult nostalgia and an adults longing for home, I think that could also mean longing for childhood. While reading Cheryl Knobel's blog she wrote, in her blog posting titled 'Tatar's Introduction': "When I heard in the summer we would be doing fairy tales for this class I immediately went to my parent's home and picked up all my fairy tale books from childhood. As I pulled them off the library bookshelf, so many memories flooded back to me." Maybe this is a part of the adult nostalgia children's literature is a part of. Then there is such a thing as children's literature, it just isn't meant for children. But then what about all of those books meant for children that are didactic in relation to morals, etiquette, pragmaticism, and nature? That isn't children's literature because it is making the child literate, curious, thoughtful, etc. and which makes the child less of a child as Lynda suggested. Lynda also said "Literacy begets more literacy" which seems obvious and simple, but also something I've never thought of.

watercolor by Ben Clanton

So then it brings me to Sutter's question in class today: "Is there such thing as a child?" Today Dr. Sexson discussed rites of passage in tribes and that is the event of a child ceremoniously, physically(circumcision), and literally leaving the world of children and becoming an adult. But then again the question of "is there such thing as a child?" becomes more than thinkable. The suggestion that literacy is one of the worst things that has happened to human kind is a reasonable one because we have forced ourselves to skip childhood by becoming literate. Then encouraging children to learn and read is robbing them of something great because we think we know best. This makes me think of The Golden Compass and how children are being severed from their deamons because the adults/church knows best.

Cinderella

I read The Second Shepherds' Pageant (Wakefield) for my Medieval Literature class and I found something in the reading that made me think of Cinderella, and I wonder how far back the ideas for fairy tales go. The beginning of the Second Shepherds play starts with three shepherds, then this guy Mak steals a sheep, then the shepherds look for the sheep at Mak's house and Mak and his wife have the sheep swaddled like a baby as a disguise, well anyway, to make this story short the shepherds are the holy fools and can't tell it's a sheep for a while, but then they start to look closer and see that he has horns, and a long snout, and Mak's wife says to them :

He was takyn with an elfe-

I saw it myself-

When the clok stroke twelf

Was he forshapyn.

This was mainly to associate witchcraft and paganism with Mak and his wife who are sinners, but I saw Cinderella transforming at midnight. I couldn't trace any fairy tales that resemble Cinderella back to the Medieval period, but a movie was made called, Ever After, which was a version of Cinderella set in the Medieval period! How cool. Drew Barrymore did a wonderful job in the movie.

Test Time!

Test Questions made from the class:

• Portmanteau = a multilevel word used in Finnegan's Wake ex: Prank Quean, another example is from Alice and Wonderland ex: slithy, which is a combination of sly and slimey
• privilaged #s in fairytales 3 & 7
• What is misplaced concreteness? ex: Rapunzel's hair and whether or not it can really hold up a human, which according to what Erin found and put in her blog, the answer is yes
• Which fairytale is type 333 according to Arny Thompson's classification? Answer: Little Red Riding Hood
• How do we get to the collective unconcious through fairytales? Answer: architypes
• Identify this quote: "if you're really crafty you'll get them both" - the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood
• What are the 3 parts of the universal quest? Answer: seperation, initiation, return
• What are the three parts of the Triple goddess? Answer: Maiden, Mother, Crone
• Why is there no original literature? Answer: all lit. is displaced myth
• When you bow to someone, what are you recognizing within them? Answer: the divine
• The genie says in Disney's Aladdin: I'm not history, I'm mythology
• What is Cideneralla's name in the Grimm version of this fairy tale? Answer: Ashgirl
• ***there will be more questions on the test dealing with differences between versions of fairytales
• According to the motif index Hans My Hedgehog, Beauty and the Beast, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon are what motif? Answer: the search for the missing husband/beast groom
• Out of Rapunzel, Bluebeard, The Juniper Tree, and Snow White, which fairytale has no struggle to concieve? Answer: Bluebeard
• What is the mother/daughter duo? Answer: Demeter and Persephone
• Write a haiku on one fairytale we were assigned to know for the test. For those of you who aren't aware or can't remember a haiku is a 3 line poem with generally 5-7-5 syllable pattern. Haiku's are generally imagistic, however I don't think you have to worry too much about that.
• What is the significance of blue in Bluebeard's beard? Answer: d. all of the above
• What triggers the transformation of the beast back into a human? Answer: Love
• The architype for a talking animal, like Mr. Ed, can be found in which ancient work of literature? Answer: The Golden Ass
• Why did Cupid wake up when psyche was looking at him? Answer: A drop of hot oil landed on his shoulder
• What do you call an error in speach or a deliberate word play like sisty uglers or bleeping sleauty? Answer: spoonerisms
• Which romantic poet believed we do not learn new things, but we just need to be reminded of them because we already know everything? Answer: William Wordsworth
• What mythical story was Beauty and the Beast supposedly derived from? Answer: Cupid and Psyche
• The moral of Bluebeard had to do with a flaw in which gender? Answer: female....curious female, because women are full of sin thanks to Eve
• Which Grimm story has a witch in it? Answer: Hansel and Gretal, witches aren't common in Grimm fairytales
• Which author wanted to marry Little Red Riding Hood? Answer: Dr. Sexson, or Katie Crystal, but the author we talked about in class was Charles Dickens
• What phrase begins most fairytales? Answer: I won't dignify this with an answer, it's too damn easy
• There will be a question that will be answered with Ewe, but to be honest I didn't understand what was going on and I don't remember the story Dr. Sexson was talking about, hopefully someone else puts somthing more clear on their blog.
• There will also be an essay, though not very long

Fairytales that we are responsible for knowing:

1. Little Mermaid
2. Little Red Riding Hood
3. Cinderella
4. Hansel and Gretal
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Bleeping Sleauty..I mean Sleeping Beauty of course, I had to slip in the spoonerism
7. Snow White
8. Rapunzel
9. East of the Sun, West of the Moon
10. Bluebeard
11. The Juniper Tree

We should know what we said about these fairytales in class and what Tatar has to say about them. Also don't forget to know the difference between these tales and the Grimm fairytales.

Good luck to us!

anti-intellectualism and What is a child? What is nature? What is a book?

Class on September 17th brought about the discussion of anger towards smart people. Sutter takes us back to some quotes in his blog post, The Learning Curve, by Dr. Sexson who joked about losing friends when they catch just a whiff of your brilliancy and intelligence.

I found this quote in the first few intro pages of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -Jonathan Swift. This Swift quote is where the title of Toole's novel was derived from. This is a classic quote that recognizes the anti-intellectualism of dunces, stupid people, dolts.

Sutter has many other interesting points in his blog post, The learning Curve, and says that Adults and teachers become molders of the child and builds it's phsychic life and by doing that adults claim the divine power making themselves gods. Read more of his blog to get the full story.
This concept of people trying to be like gods reminded me of Samuel Coleridge and his view of the eternal act of creation. Perceiving the world is like creating the world for ourselves, but didn't God create the world, so then humans become like little gods in that sense. I think humans are all trying to have that power by manipulating everything they have a hard time understanding. Sutter talks about children being molded and manipulated by adults. Don't we do this to nature as well? Moving it, destroying it, rebuilding it. Feminist literary criticism suggests nature is womanly because it is deemed mother nature and men conquer nature and men conquer women, however this seems extreme, but it does reinforce how humans try to conquer and manipulate nature. We try to percieve and recreate nature because, as Sir Phillip Sidney believes that nature's world is brazen, but the poetry world is golden because it improves on what is real. There we go percieving and creating again, but it is so fun. We can manipulate books as well by construing a meaning from them and twisting it making it work for our purposes. The author works it for his or her own purpose. I don't mean to say there is anything wrong with manipulating children, nature, or literature, or maybe there is something wrong in it, but we do it. All three of these things must be more than thinkable to give themselves a future.

Now we get to the painfully straightforward questions: what is a child? what is nature? What is a book? All of these things have the beginning of life. A child is a new human, nature creates itself anew each year, and books make the old new, and as Percy Shelley said, restoring the vital metaphoricity of our language by creating new associations...new metaphors. All three of these concepts make the world as if it were fresh and new. And all three can be manipulated, and adults like to manipulate them. Could they manipulate adults? I don't see why not.